Harlan did not knock at the anteroom door; he walked in, and for a moment he thought that the enraged chairman was about to leap at his throat.

“Spinney, eh?” he blazed at the young man’s first word.  “Explain to me, Mr. Thornton, what is meant by your assault on a decent and honest citizen?  What do you mean by teaming him from the hotel to this convention hall with a body-guard to insult men who have business with him?”

The question was confession that the chairman had been unable to get at the political property he had paid dearly for.  It indicated that he suspected but did not realize fully how deeply Spinney was in the toils.

“Explain!” shouted Presson, standing on tiptoe to thrust features convulsed with rage into the young man’s face.

“General Waymouth is waiting to explain, sir.  He’s across the stage, there!  And Mr. Spinney is with him.  I’d advise you to hurry.”

“I don’t need any of your advice!  If you’ve got him on exhibition at last where the public can be admitted, I can’t get there any too quick.”

He rushed out, charging like a bull, and the others followed.

The State committeeman who closed file with Harlan did not appreciate the gravity of the situation.

“You seem to be introducing new features into a State Convention to-day, cap’n,” he observed, sarcastically.  “The way you’re handling Brother Spinney is like the song about

“’Old Jud Cole, who went by freight To Newry Corner in this State; Packed him in a crate to get him there, With a two-cent stamp to pay his fare.’”

He added, “Spinney is light enough to travel on that tariff, but you’re going to find he’s got friends that are heavier.”

Young Thornton waited till all had entered the anteroom, and again took his post as guard on the inside of the door.

General Waymouth checked Presson at the first yelp of the outburst with which he had stormed into the room.  Probably there was not another man in the State who could have prevailed by sheer force of dignity and carriage in that moment when the passions of his opponents were so white-hot.  But he was, in intellect, birth, breeding, and position, above them all, and they knew it.  There, boxed in that little room, they faced him, and anger, rancor, spite, itch for revenge gave way before his stern, cold, inexorable determination to prevail in the name of the right.

“Gentlemen, I haven’t called you here for the purpose of arguing or wrangling.  You’ll waste time by trying to do either.  You are here to listen to what must be done.  You represent the warring factions.  There are enough of us to straighten the matter out.  There are not so many that the secret of this shameful mess cannot be kept, and our party saved at the polls.”

He paused to draw the fateful documents from his pocket.

In the hush of the little room they heard Senator Pownal declaiming:  “And it is upon these firm principles, bedrock of inalienable rights guaranteed to the people, upon the broad issues of reform, inculcation of temperance, and the virtues of civic life, that the Republican party is founded.”